Somali journalist jailed after interviewing rape victim is freed
A Somali journalist jailed for a year after he interviewed a woman who said she was raped by state security forces has been released and his conviction overturned.
Somali journalist Abdiaziz Abdinur (R) talks to reporters after the high court freed him in the capital of Mogadishu Photo: Reuters
By Mike Pflanz, Nairobi 1:37PM GMT 18 Mar 2013
Somalia's new government and its courts had faced intense international pressure to amend the verdict against Abdiaziz Abdinur, who wrote occasionally for The Telegraph.
He was found guilty in February of charges that he embarrassed state institutions, and given a one-year sentence that was then reduced on appeal to six months.
But Somalia's High Court said on Sunday that it had "no evidence to support [Mr Abdinur's] charges" and immediately ordered him to be released.
As he left the court, he said he was "very happy to be free" and thanked Somali pressure groups and the international community that raised the profile of his case.
Mr Adbinur interviewed a woman in a Mogadishu camp for displaced people in December, after she had reported that she was gang raped by soldiers or policemen.
Such crimes are endemic to the Somali capital, and especially the squatter camps that sprang up in compounds of ruined houses after the country's war and its 2011 famine.
Mr Abdinur and the woman, Luul Ali Osman, 27, were both arrested and subsequently convicted, even though the journalist never published his story, which he was not researching for The Telegraph.
The court rulings were met with dismay among press freedom advocates, who said the judgment would deter journalists from doing their jobs and stop women reporting rape.
Barack Obama's administration had said that the verdict sent "the wrong message to perpetrators of sexual and gender-based violence".
Abdi Farah Shirdon, Somalia's prime minister, promised to reform the country's armed forces and the judiciary once the trial concluded, acknowledging "deep-seated problems" with both institutions.
